Top Tips for Managing Retention

Top Tips for Managing Retention

Employees may consider a new job opportunity for any of a number of reasons. Common motivators include career advancement, an external promotion, a salary increase, improved benefits or perhaps that sought after work/life balance.

However, what should be more concerning to an organisation is that it is not just the active candidates that are at risk of leaving the business. It can be your most engaged, productive and motivated employees (the organisations top talent or high potentials) that are most at risk of being a prime target – these employees are known as the passive candidates.

Therefore, retention needs to be factored into every aspect of human resource management and strategic HR planning. This includes candidate attraction and hiring strategy, recruitment and selection, compensation and benefits, reward and recognition, career paths (promotion and progression opportunities), training and development and performance management.

Candidate Attraction & Hiring Strategy

Hiring retainable staff needs to be at the forefront of an organisations candidate attraction strategy. Organisations need to understand the factors that retain their existing high performing employees and equally the reasons for employees leaving.

The candidate attraction strategy needs to address those factors that candidates consider attractive enough to leave their current employment and those factors in turn help an organisation to retain their top talent and prevent them from being persuaded to leave the business. The number one reason for leaving a job is still money however there are other important factors such as work/life balance, career advancement, being involved in more challenging work projects or assignments and good working relationships with their peers and manager.

Total Rewards & Compensation

If an organisation wants to attract top talent and retain their best employees then they need to understand what their competitors offer in terms of, total compensation (salaries, benefits, bonuses, incentives etc.), reward and recognition, as well as career paths, training and development, progression or promotional opportunities and the working environment etc.

Companies will need this market intelligence to benchmark and make informed and quality human resource management decisions. It will not be so easy to attract employees out of your organisation if your total compensation is aligned to the competition.

Career Paths

Another way of ensuring your employees remain engaged, motivated and loyal to the organisation is to invest in their career development. Employees want to be challenged in their roles, they want to continuously learn and develop new and existing skills and know they are valued and making a difference.

A fair and equitable salary is not enough on its own to attract or retain the best talent. That is why it is so important to review the entire employment proposition. It is also much more difficult and expensive to recruit and replace employees that have left the organisation with advanced skills and extensive in-depth company knowledge.

Unemployment is at its lowest in seven years and as a consequence organisations will need to shift their focus to attracting candidates by “selling” the employment proposition as candidates in a job are much more selective about the next career move. A buoyant job market creates a higher demand for skilled and talented individuals which increases the risk of your existing employees being persuaded to leave. For this reason employers also need to carefully manage and invest in their existing talent to ensure they remain engaged, productive and loyal.

As Richard Branson once said “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to”

Careerz Limited, based in Canterbury, offer specialist recruitment services across Kent, London and the South East.

For further information, please call John Adams on 01227 656 888 or or 0208 0990 888 or visit www.careerz.co.uk